EPA fails to protect Americans from toxic chemical spills (again)

We thought we’d learned a lesson: In 2014, a spill of coal-cleaning chemicals in Charleston, West Virginia, left more than 300,000 residents without clean tap water for a week. After being sued by NRDC and others for negligence, the U.S. Protection Agency agreed in a settlement to put a new standard in place to prevent hazardous spills on industrial sites by this month and to issue a final rule in 2019. Alas, the agency has turned up empty-handed, failing to issue the court-mandated rule. The agency's failure puts all Americans at risk but some communities more than others: A report shows that facilities that manufacture, store, and use toxic chemicals tend to cluster in low-income neighborhoods of color.